


dysphoria and movie night

by minkspit



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Gen, Mental Illness, Murder, Poetry, basil karlo is easily the most interesting clayface to me, horror movies, oh well, sure didn't stop me from writing this, too bad he's an asshole in most incarnations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-21 07:30:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20689781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkspit/pseuds/minkspit
Summary: It doesn't matter if he wants to go,Clayface tells himself,because he can't.The city is full.No space for another villain tonight.Karlo must stay home.





	dysphoria and movie night

This weekend,

Clayface stays in.

Riddler is spewing his second-rate sphinx trash on Fifth,

Babydoll has the gatling gun out of her Lux Avenue dollhouse while

Penguin polishes glasses in the Iceberg Lounge,

and Ivy schemes behind lush glass

which leaves Joker to rob the bank on Main

and Killer Croc to dine in the dark, rushing sewers 

beneath it all.

So it doesn't matter if he wants to go,

Clayface tells himself,

because he can't.

The city is full.

No space for another villain tonight.

Karlo must stay home.

All nights in for Clayface are 

nights alone with himself,

the best person he knows.

The lights are off, though they didn’t cut the electricity,

because the TV works when he taps it.

The static hisses while Clayface rolls down the hall,

a mass of flesh dirt on hardwood and carpet -

all merciless touch, no hands.

The kitchen is dust and unwiped counters

with a calendar from last year and 

the sour ghost of food but the cheap case of wine

is where it belongs. Clayface always gets himself

a present after Arkham.

Someone must. There are no fans 

anymore.

He juggles the wine case in the outer orbit of his body,

hoping to keep the cold glass away from the mushy gut-ribs-soul space. 

It's the principle of the thing.

No one can violate Clayface anymore because there is no

mouth to fill, no

hands to twist, no

hair or heart to pull, no beginning to end; a body that retches itself

into the space around it like 

a drowning toddler thrashing against pool walls is 

too busy violating or always being violated to feel violation.

But Clayface loves to act. So he 

pretends it bothers him.

Clayface drops the wine case in the living room,

then squashes himself into something like a man on the way to 

the bedroom. (It doesn't hurt anymore).

If he looks down, he can see the trail

worn into the carpet between here and there.

Obviously, Clayface thinks, he has his priorities figured out.

He pities the beasts who need other people to rage against

or hold

to know they're worth all the space 

life imprisons them in.

_ What idiots. _

The stained silk robe doesn't fit Karlo like it used to,

because it remembers a bridge of shoulders 

plus scaffolding of

hips and entrails, but this

facsimile

of a form tricks it into laying right, more or less.

None of his old luxuries fit like they used to. The fact his makeshift hands

stain whatever is under them 

doesn't help.

Clayface doubles back, grabs a wine bottle, then

peruses all the framed movie posters alongside 

signed set photos 

in the hallway. It's the only wall of glass Clayface doesn't mind.

Most of the photos are from the shooting of Dread Castle.

The good one.

Clayface intends to rewatch it. He always does. He needs an appetite first

that's all.

The film crew's faces are smiling and

faded and

grotesque next to his old one; Clayface can't look Basil Karlo in the face

since he's a tenacious bastard that never blinks, or shows

signs of weakness, but

judging the crew comes easy.

The best picture of Karlo has two other people in it.

Skinny, morbid Brenda got married a while back, Clayface knows,

to some other cameraman,

while Yvan - if that's him in the background handling props -

might've killed himself.

Who knows what happened to everyone else. No one has said 'hi' in years.

_ They're cowards, _ Clayface thinks. _ They're scared of me. _

_ Blood onscreen was fine _

_ until it spilled over. _

By this point, he's half a bottle in,

and ready to watch movies.

Clayface stumbles back to the living room on mud blood feet.

With a face smeared on, he drops onto the discolored, broken couch 

in front of his television and VCR,

blinds open,

cracked door unlocked.

It's night. The air smells like smog. Clayface doesn't bother to hide.

There are no neighbors beyond distant, screaming cats,

beyond the scared old man that sobs in Mandarin in the gutters,

because a son forgot about dementia and didn't

lock the door.

Clayface's home is a forbidden place.

The streets are always dead.

So Clayface grabs a movie from a wall full of tapes.

There are stacks of them to go through. He leans back 

with a folded leg 

sticking out of the robe slit. 

Clayface crunches through 

wine bottle necks with his teeth, spits the shards

and cork on the carpet and drinks his way through 

a string of pulpy movies.

He smirks when he sees his old self. Sometimes he curses.

When the camera lingers on Basil Karlo's face

too long

Clayface grouses. He scrapes his fingers into his thigh until they're knuckle-deep - 

begging to scrape against a femur -

but there's no pain, no blood, 

just filth, and his leg flesh sucks his fingers away.

When he gets drunk enough, every reformed hand comes with

angry tears.

The open window doesn't matter.

Clayface doesn't worry about it.

What’s Batman going to do if he sees him?

Arrest him

for unkindness to a stranger's body?

This isn't a crime.

Dread Castle is the best movie and the worst.

Clayface sees the edges of his face, Karlo's face, in 

every grainy shot

every green-lit twist of the castle hallways thats shows off

the sweep of his spine and his expressions as 

he runs and shouts and kills,

but neither of those things feel like his. It's not there when he touches his 

void 

of a face or form. Clayface is nothing but dripping tar pretending to be 

a man. He connects 

to the faces of subpar actors that surround 

Basil Karlo

as much as he connects to Karlo. 

Clayface laughs at them. He sneers, too.

(_You're better than the rest of them _

_ even if you hate yourself _).

He looks very good in Dread Castle.

Especially his hair and arms.

Clayface feels pained numb nothing when he tries to connect the dots,

to smash visages and souls together,

but he hasn't lost his sense of judgement.

_ The fact they tried to hire that cheap imitation of me for the remake, _

Clayface thinks, _is ridiculous._ _If that replacement hadn’t lost his life_

_ they would have lost their audience. They did anyway, _

_ thanks to me. _

_ He wasn't a bad man, but he was _

_ an atrocious actor. _

Clayface knows why he looks good in Dread Castle besides 

all the rehearsals.

Someone once told Karlo

that eating spoiled the star's frame

bloated the cheekbones

swallowed the face

dulled the expressions.

So he spewed lunches into porcelain bowls between scenes, out of love for himself,

to try and improve the perfect.

He stopped when an extra counted the lines beneath his eyes

heard the strain in his voice

and asked if he was tired.

Then Karlo scarfed apples and caffeine pills til he puked

due to an overfull stomach before

heading to voice practice.

He became more careful about that sort of trick.

Mediocre line delivery,

even for a cheap movie,

was worse 

than looking bad.

Why was anyone surprised

that he killed someone? More than one someone?

He started more handsome and more talented than the rest of that crew, 

yet devoted to bettering himself,

to wringing his body and voice until they

screamed

under the weight of all the improvements. He fought tooth and nail to be

B-class and left bloody furrows on the scripts from late-night

binging and purging and practicing and screaming and adoring self hatred 

to make himself the best at something,

because he had to be the best at something.

Reality had to mirror his reality,

or none of it mattered: it was just steam on the windows

the way his family and friends 

and good days were.

Then one day Basil Karlo went home

when the cameras were off

to learn that was it:

someone else

was equal. Better.

None of those nights really mattered

at all

if he looked at it right.

He was replaceable

like any other

reel of

subpar

film.

In the present, Clayface remembers why 

he thought being on the advising staff instead of starring was the end 

of the world. 

Now it doesn't matter. No one will cast him in 

anything again. Acting propels him through Gotham's streets.

It does little more.

Nowadays, to be comfortable in a figure is to act. The faces

and limbs all come off eventually, like

make-up melting off under

set-lights and a spigot.

_ My body was supposed to be a gift that lasted a lifetime, _

Clayface thinks. _ No matter how it changed. _But

many gifts like that

don't last. 

Karlo knows that now. Admiring his past self is 

nothing but vanity.

He puts in another tape anyway.

There's no point in fighting Batman tonight. The Dark Knight has options. This is 

Karlo's only role. Exhaust it, and there's nothing left.

It can wait for 

a while.

So Clayface stays in

drunk

watching movies about a man

he doesn't know anymore.


End file.
